


i cannot promise you songs

by braithwaites



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Bittersweet, F/F, Gen, Memories, Reminiscing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-02-19 17:11:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13128027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/braithwaites/pseuds/braithwaites
Summary: Athelwyn Lavellan visits Leliana in her rookery to learn about the Warden, the spymaster's deceased lover, to find that she is more willing to share the stories with her than anyone else for one reason - Athelwyn's story reminds her very much of Athena's.





	i cannot promise you songs

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the [santa-age](http://santa-age.tumblr.com) Secret Santa for 2017. Both Athelwyn and Athena belong to the lovely [nightengalesseyes.](http://nightengalesseyes.tumblr.com) Thank you so much for letting me borrow them!

Leliana opened up like a slow-blooming flower.

Gradually, quietly, and few people drew any notice.

Those who did see a difference in her moved around the subject of the Grey Warden with the utmost care, sparing encouraging words and looks rather than reaching with a hope to find a deeper truth.

She appreciated their efforts more than she ever told them. The eagerness to learn about a hero such as the Warden was understandable. The story was vast and astounding and romantic, if ultimately tragic, with a tumultuous beginning and a blessed middle and a heart-rending end.

Who didn't love such stories?

Yellow candlelight flickered against the smooth leather of her gloves as she read the winding script of an agent tucked into distant Antiva. The thinned corner of her mouth curled at the mention of Zevran. He knew he was being watched, and he took that opportunity to show off as often and as daringly as possible. Typical.

A creak on the stairwell sent a ripple of reaction through the ravens above her head. They ruffled their feathers, but none of them cried out to ward off the trespasser or to warn her of the arrival of the guest.

They were quiet little things. Well-trained and polite.

In another life, Leliana imagined herself with a silver-furred cat or perhaps a falcon, a loping Borzoi or even a sweet-tempered mabari. Anything but a rookery full of ravens.

But that other life was a memory now, faded like words on a page.

A familiar blonde head was the first thing Leliana saw out of the corner of her eye, followed by a slender shape and the exuberant aura she associated with the Inquisitor. She set the letter down to be read once Athelwyn turned and left again.

Leliana busied herself with tidying her desk as the Inquisitor approached. She removed her warmed wax from above the candle's fire. She brought her glass of mead to her lips for a sip to wet her mouth, all while shifting through the correspondence she'd received in recent days from agents scattered across Thedas.

Only when Athelwyn stopped in front of her desk did she look up to acknowledge her, the heavy glass still held in her hand.

“The hour is late for you to visit me, is it not?” Leliana asked. They were long past stilted and formal introductions, onto something more familiar. “Is there something weighing on you?”

Athelwyn perched at the edge of her desk, though she was careful not to bump anything around. She peered up into the rafters, marveling at the birds above them both. “I keep wondering why Solas is okay with working beneath all these birds. It must get messy down there, yeah?”

“My ravens know to loose their bowels elsewhere,” Leliana responded without hesitation. Her nose wrinkled a little, but then, she sighed. “They have been trained to avoid such an unpleasant mess.”

Two pale brows shot up the Inquisitor's face. “They know how to...?”

Leliana nodded before rubbing away the furrow between her brows. “They know,” she said, quietly. “Is that why you have come here? To ask me whether or not they use Solas's head for target practice?”

There was no blanching her voice of amusement. The Inquisitor was bright and sunny, even steeped in a night as dark as pitch, and Leliana could not help but lean towards her like a flower aching for the warmth of sunbeams.

After so long in the dark and in the cold, she was not surprised that she considered Athelwyn Lavellan a friend.

“No,” Athelwyn said with a huff. She rocked her slippered foot from heel to toe to heel against the rookery's wooden floor. “How am I supposed to sleep after what happened at Adamant? I never paid much mind to the Fade til it was put in me.” She gave her hand a wave, leaving a swath of pale green in its wake.

If anything, Leliana understood the burden of fate and circumstance. She understood the weight of power and how it threatened to crumble all who carried it to dust.

A quiver ran down her spine, and she sat up a little straighter.

“So... after sitting up with Sera for a while, she said I should maybe come see you. You knew the Warden better than anyone.” Her foot swung this time, just above the floor, and she plucked at the hem of her sleeve. “How did she deal with... this?”

Leliana felt her heart sink and then rise again in her chest. The warmth of the mead all but bled out of her in that very moment.

Of course.

Of course the Inquisitor would reach out for a story about the Warden, with so many fresh images of blue and silver armor and helms with griffon wings in her mind. What hero did not eagerly reach into the past to find support for themselves? They often rose higher on the glory of those beyond them, given how many lessons there were to learn throughout Thedas's long and heroic history.

“How much do you know of the Warden?” Leliana asked.

… _my Warden_.

The words she spoke were different from those that echoed in her heart of hearts, but she could not share those. They were bloody, and they were vital to her. If she shared too many of them, how would she survive?

“I know she was an elf,” Athelwyn began. “I know she was born in an Alienage. Horrible place, yeah?”

Leliana watched the Inquisitor as she spoke. There were parts of her that stood out as having once belonged to Sera. They mimicked each other in places as the closest lovers tended to do. She heard Sera in her voice, in some of her words. She saw her in little affectations, like the way she pulled at her sleeves, like the way laughed louder than she had in the beginning.

Or maybe that was due to how happy her lady-love made her. She remembered that feeling, too, as if love lit a torch inside of her chest. The glow of it was constant and yellow and perfect.

And it was still there. Somehow, after all these years. Somehow, still warming her from within.

“I've only heard a little about her. Sera says elves passed stories about her 'round the worst places, even in Orlais. It was a big deal to them, hearing about a lady elf who did such important things. Important, _real_ things.”

Athelwyn was only eleven, perhaps twelve, when Athena crossed Ferelden to save her country from the Blight, when she gave up everything to save the people who never cared a fig for her before then. Ten years had passed since, and there were lines around her mouth, carved deep into her skin from grief.

To be older and smiling rather than older and frowning. To live a different life, tucked into the boughs of Ferelden with her Warden.

“There is a statue of her in Denerim,” Leliana said. Her words were slow to surface on her tongue. She slid over them with care, wary about too heavy a touch. “Tall as a building, carved from stone, painted in rich shades of brown and blue and silver.”

Athelwyn worried at the corner of her bottom lip. “What would she think about a statue like that?”

“'Why would they spend all that gold on a statue of me? They got the jaw wrong, anyway. And don't they know my hair is darker than my skin rather than the other way around?'”

Leliana chuckled to herself and gave her head a gentle shake. She curled a lock of faded red hair around her gloved forefinger. A girlish gesture, but one she couldn't avoid.

“It was carved and painted not long after she...” A tension rose in Leliana's expression. She felt the telltale twitch of her eye, the downward tug at the corners of her mouth. “Not long after she passed. I was not there to give them instruction, and those involved did not bother to ask her relatives.”

“'Cause they were elves?” Athelwyn shifted higher up onto the desk, as if prepared to be offended for the Warden's sake and for the sake of her family.

“Because they were angry,” Leliana told her with another sigh. The curl unfurled when she pulled her hand away, and she rested her palms against the surface of the desk. “And, yes, because they were elves.”

Athelwyn chewed at her thumb nail. Her eyes never rested in one place for very long, not during conversation. They flitted about like a hummingbird on blurred wings. There was a tension in the way she held herself, as if every limb would snap into place if she said the wrong thing or heard something startling.

“Sera's seen the statue,” she said before biting down on her already blunt nail again. “She says it stretched up to the sun, that it was the biggest thing she'd ever seen.”

“I imagine it would seem particularly stunning to a child.” Leliana let go of a quiet laugh. “She wouldn't have hated the statue for what it represented, even if she was sure to hate how it portrayed her. Athena was not made of stone. She was... mortal flesh, and there was a softness about her.”

Leliana glanced down at the letter. Zevran commissioned a portrait of Athena from an Antivan master after the Blight was well and truly over. The painting remained in her apartment in Val Royeaux. There was nothing more beautiful in all of Thedas. Where the sculptor did not know her and did not ask, Zevran gave the painter every detail he could remember about Athena Tabris, right down to the pale scar above her lip and the flecks of gold in her eyes.

She had a portrait and a lock of hair kept safe in a golden pendant. She had a drawing of Athena, half-reclined before the fire at camp. While she was no artist, the picture brought back certain memories with surprising clarity.

Those memories were framed with joy, even in the midst of the war. Funny, finding such beautiful things among so much rot and decay, among so much blood.

Quietly, Leliana splayed her hands over the letter.

“Do you ever consider what works of art you will leave among the living when you're gone, Inquisitor?”

Athelwyn puffed out her cheeks before letting go of the air held within them in a rush. Her narrow shoulders sagged, and her foot swung, skidding over the wooden floorboards with a sound not unlike a gasp. “I don't know,” she said after a moment of deliberation. “Doesn't seem likely that many people will remember I'm an elf. There aren't any pointy ears in Val Royeaux.”

The defacing of art was a problem and a tragedy, but Celene was dismantling those ideals piece by piece, no matter what she thought of the Empress's methods.

“Lah-veh-luhn, eh?” Athelwyn mimicked the nasal voices of the Orlesian nobles who frequented Skyhold. “I didn't know the Inquisitor was Antivan. Did she have any connection to the merchant princes of Antiva City? How quaint.”

Leliana laughed despite herself. The accent was a mixture of Ladies Guyonne and Emée right down to the distinct whine.

“Very impressive,” she offered, and Athelwyn gave a seated bow.

Leliana glanced out of thin window at her shoulder. Through the clouded panes of glass, she could see lights dancing inside of the Herald's Rest. But did the Herald ever rest? Did she ever truly let go of the tension in her back and the worries wound around her heart? Love could do so much, but never had Leliana ever seen it solve everything.

“I'll make sure they know,” Leliana murmured before turning towards Athelwyn again and repeating herself in a firmer voice. “I'll make sure they know who you are, that you were an elf, that you were in love with another woman.”

Her lips thinned as she swallowed back the sudden rush of emotion. She and Sera had few similarities, but in this, maybe they understood each other.

“I cannot promise songs, or a statue that reaches to the sun, but I can promise you that they will know you were Athelwyn Lavellan, of Clan Lavellan.” Reaching out, Leliana curled her gloved hand around one of the Inquisitor's. “I promise. No, I _swear_. No one will ever forget you.”

Athelwyn looked down at their joined hands. She moved to speak, but stopped herself, drawing her legs up farther onto the desk so she could get a better look at Leliana.

“Tell me more about Athena,” she said. Not a demand, but a plea. “So I can remember her, too.”

Leliana's heart rose in her chest, and she let go of a sigh that threatened to wring her out completely. Days in Skyhold were long. The sun reached them before it reached Ferelden's valleys, and she rose in the hours preceding the golden light. But now, there was a reason to stay awake.

There was a reason to rise from her chair and stretch her sore muscles and remind herself of why she was there, why she became a hero and refused to stray from her path.

In a word, Athena.

In three, the truest love.

An hour passed in the guttering candlelight. Athelwyn sat at the edge of Leliana's desk, rapt, her eyes shining in the yellow glow, and Leliana tracked across the floor, regaling her with tales of the Warden and her wardening. She told her about the werewolves of Brecilian Forest, about the ancient golems of the Deep Roads and their horrible fate, about those times when Athena disappeared into the Alienage only to return with rough, homespun gifts and a smile on her face.

There were things she did not share, but Athelwyn knew and respected her in that. Those moments were hers to keep close, wound around her fingers like a lock of hair. Those moments would fade, eventually, but until then, they would keep Athena alive in her truest form.

That was the world Leliana loved – a world where she kept her close, even if she did not hold her in her hands.

She began a story about the traitor Loghain Mac Tir when they heard a shout below:

“Inky!”

The voice was familiar, and the nickname made Athelwyn's ears perk up. The Inquisitor rushed to the window and pressed her cheek to the cool glass.

“It's Sera,” she said, breathless and beaming.

“Go to her.” Leliana brushed her hands over the mail covering her bodice and smiled to herself, a small, content thing that curled the corners of her mouth.

Athelwyn leapt from the desk, but before she reached the stairwell, she heard the spymaster at her back speak again.

“Make some memories while you can.”

A wistful sort of mourning followed her words like a fog, but she wore hope on her face. Hope for her, for the love she held for the elf standing in the courtyard below. And that was all that mattered.

 


End file.
